Elm, Oak, and the Pokemart Guy
by SilentProtagonist000
Summary: EXTREMECRACK. Oak had never quite been so painfully in love as he was now-and that love was not private. Professor Elm/The guy that gives you the potion on Route 1 and works at the PokeMart/Professor Oak. I need a new hobby.


They didn't know his name. Was it really necessary to learn such trivial information? Designations given to one at birth weren't imperative to know about someone you're sleeping with and not much else. Names were useful only if a long-term relationship was involved—and Oak and Elm had married and remarried so many times that they had no fancy to take on another partner for permanence. Besides, there was something alluring in the notion that a younger man was beguiling them—it made Oak and Elm feel youthful again, like they were teenagers in high demand with both sexes at the height of their Pokemon training careers.

He made them feel immature. He was magic. There was no other man on the planet like him.

Of course, he had a day job—he had to make a living somehow, so he could sustain his home and his need to eat. Oak would stumble across him sometimes in nearby Viridian, fetching boxes of Potions and Repels from parked trucks to restock inventory in the local Poke Mart. Trainers trickled in and out endlessly, as Viridian was the midpoint between the Kanto and Johto regions. He had the location advantage against Elm, he knew—he was practically next door to Oak's lab where the Professor had whittled away many years of his sleepy life studying species of Pokemon. The boredom factor set in quickly and often, and Oak—like any other Pokemon researcher who existed as a bachelor and had spent far too much time wasting his money on women—needed refreshment from his tiring career.

And that was where he came in.

He might have worked as a Pokemart employee, but he might as well have been an erotic model—his body was tanned and chiseled, and had he been more famous, he would have even put the equally fit Champion Lance into an inferior position. A shock of kinky brown hair tousled his head, and he was indeed a brunette everywhere, as Oak was the first to find out. He transfixed anyone and everyone with the deep pools of blue that captivated his eyes—women bought more from him and his bedmates like Elm and Oak couldn't resist a slight request from him. His very attendance was hypnotic.

And it was because of his intense beauty that he did not limit himself to one lover—when Elm called the Pokemart in Viridian to seek a "private delivery" of an "important item," he would always assign himself to that duty. In his opinion, Oak knew, Elm was more attractive to the Pokemart man simply because he was younger than Professor Oak. Even if he had to traverse angry waters on a seafaring Pokemon, he preferred Elm to Oak.

This troubled Oak, but he sympathized with the boy. He had once been his age, although his focus had mainly been women in those days. But they had proved to be too much trouble and just added more wrinkles to his already puckered brow. When he received a call after the boy had ended his shift at the Pokemart that he wasn't going to be in his bed that night, Oak would swallow and let it slide. He didn't blame him—Oak was old. The professor was far past his prime. Wisdom was the pride he earned with getting older, but nonetheless, Oak greatly missed his ability to please any man or woman that came calling at his door. He was just an ancient coot now that ushered new Pokemon trainers into the world, watching as they grew through the ranks like weeds and defeated the Elite Four with proficient ease.

And yet he wasn't the man he had once been. He was a shell of his former self. The boy knew this, and he tried to coax Oak into what he called the "truth" as they lay in the warm afterglow that Oak realized might be gone someday—that he was a fantastic researcher, that his days of pursuing Red's mother were over, but that Oak still had him.

Oak might have been foolish enough to be cast under the Mart boy's spell, but he wasn't stupid. Oak didn't have him. And he never would, either, because Elm was the boy's proper love affair, tried and true. It would last beyond Oak's days, and Oak understood that someday, he would watch his last paramour run into the arms of his overtly thin, tall rival that peered over the rims of his glasses instead of through the lenses. Elm might have been twenty years Oak's junior, but he was as good—if not better—than Oak himself. Still, the reality that Elm was stealing both his field and his sweetheart didn't trouble Oak.

It was better Elm than anybody else, he firmly believed.

Each time the boy came calling to Oak's building, the professor was unsure if it was out of genuine desire or obligation. But the professor felt that he wasn't going to stick around any longer to find out—and every time the boy did appear, Oak promised himself that he would banish the boy, tell him to go to Elm evermore and leave him to age without grace. Yet that never happened. The enchantment was too strong. It was bond that refused to be broken.  
Oak couldn't demolish the empowering way he felt whenever the boy uttered his name in that profound bass when he had no name—to Oak, anyway. He couldn't stop himself from wanting to strip the boy down to his bare skin and do things that left him in shame. He couldn't bring his voice to cry out when the boy left him to be with Elm.

And for that, he was humiliated. More so than he had ever been before.

_He was certain of one thing, though—and that was that the boy was a damn good salesman._


End file.
